With period illustrations by Caldecott winners; Charming poems based on nature; Birds, Beasts and the Third Thing: Poems by D. H. Lawrence, selected and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. New York: The Viking Press. 40 pp.

October 8, 1982

Caldecott Award winners Alice and Martin Provensen have drawn scenes based on D. H. Lawrence's childhood to illustrate appropriate poems for children by this prolific poet and novelist.

The acrylic and pen drawings capture the flavor of the small coal-mining town in Nottingham, England, where Lawrence grew up in the late 1800s. Readers find the young poet depicted in a variety of quaint Victorian settings from the schoolroom to the seaside.

Many of the poems express Lawrence's love of nature, as he writes about hummingbirds, the beauty of sunsets, how a bird makes its living, the mysteries of water, rainbows, and atoms, and his fascination with outer space.